It's funny how so many people fail to answer Maoman's questions and instead attack the Atkins diet. I think this area should be for answering his questions. If u want to attack the Atkins diet, please start your own discussion topic.

Maoman, the new grocery store at 101 has Crystal Light and sugar-free Koolaid! (I love sweets! but need to watch my gut too!) If I recall correctly, they have sugar free jello as well. There is a small western grocery store in Yonghe that carried diet rootbeer (Grandma Nitti's has A&W rootbeer, but not the diet stuff!), which is also caffeine free. I haven't been there for a while, so I'm not sure whether they still carry it any longer. However, it wouldn't surprise me if they were to have other diet drinks and such too.

Melba toast? never heard of it, sorry!

A friend of mine lost a lot of weight on the Atkins and still looks really good (he goes on and off it now). Keep up the effort! It'll be worth it. My friend said that u can also buy over the internet Atkins chocolate, etc.! However, it might be a bit expensive. U can also try GNC and the other sports places. Maybe they'll have sports-bars low in carbs....

Mother Theresa wrote:Should one follow the diet advice of a 258 pound man who dies at 72 after a history of congestive heart failure and high blood pressure?

To be fair, according to the article, he died after slipping on an icy street and hitting his head, not from any health-related issues. It also said that he weighed 195 pounds when he was first admitted into the hospital in a coma. The rapid weight gain was due to fluid-retention, a symptom common to critically-ill patients. His enlarged heart was due to a viral infection he had suffered years earlier. And this is all from an article you're using to assert that his diet advice was off-base? It doesn't really help your case, does it?

Actually, regardless of how he died, while a high-fat, high-protein diet (I think that's what he advocated) may allow one to indulge in lots of tasty Fred Fests, I don't think it's a healthy thing. And I've noticed over the years that people offering diet advice often seem to have the most trouble with a healthy diet themselves.

I'm with Fred:

fredericka bimmel wrote:Atkins schmatkins. I lost 10 kilos in two months by reducing calories, working out regularly, cutting down on fats and sweets and eating lots of raw vegetables. I'm not prone to fad diets because they're notoriously hard to stick to because you get these awful cravings that won't go away until you've ruined your diet, putting you back to square one. Besides, the weight comes back a little slower when you are just very careful rather than doing strange things to your system.

"The internet is a monster over which we have no control. We can’t even turn it off." Jeremy Clarkson

AP wire wrote: The doctor's heart troubles had been previously known publicly, and the council asserted Tuesday that they were a result of cardiomyopathy, or an enlarged heart, which it said stemmed from a viral infection, not diet.

Physicians for Responsible Medicine, the group that released the report and promotes a vegetarian diet, acknowledged that fluid retention may have been responsible for some of Atkins' weight gain, but probably not all of it. The group maintains that the Atkins diet poses weight and health risks to the millions who follow it.

Atkins weighed 195 pounds when he was admitted

In April 2002, a year before he died, Atkins issued a statement saying he was recovering from cardiac arrest related to a heart infection he had suffered from. . . .

The Atkins diet recently gained renewed popularity after studies showed that people lost weight without compromising their health. The studies showed that Atkins dieters' cardiovascular risk factors and overall cholesterol readings changed for the better.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, declined to comment on the report, which she said was erroneously released to a doctor in Nebraska who requested it and apparently gave it to the vegetarian group.

It was later discovered that the doctor was not "the treating physician" and should not have had access to the report. Borakove said her office planned to complain to Nebraska health officials.

So, let's see: some bunch of vegetarian wackos, who have a preexisting ideological axe to grind with the Atkins Diet, lies to obtain the coroner's report, then misrepresents the status of Atkins' health. Sounds like you've done your homework as usual, MT.

I was aware of the Atkin's diet and had heard both the hype of people shedding incredible amounts of weight and also the side effects: that it was really just starving your brain of carbohydrates so it began using your fat for energy and the fact that you stink from eating so many chunks of burnt animal carcasses (or the common name - meat). So enter I into the US where every bloody food commercial, including those classic health food vendors Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, is talking about carbs, low carbs, fewer carbs than..., blah, blah, blah. Granted, I am far from a supermodel figure, but after taking a glimpse at the local wildlife, I can see where desperate matters would warrant a miracle diet.

So, is the Atkin's diet actually healthy or is it just another dangerous fad diet?

fredericka bimmel wrote:Atkins schmatkins. I lost 10 kilos in two months by reducing calories, working out regularly, cutting down on fats and sweets and eating lots of raw vegetables. I'm not prone to fad diets because they're notoriously hard to stick to because you get these awful cravings that won't go away until you've ruined your diet, putting you back to square one. Besides, the weight comes back a little slower when you are just very careful rather than doing strange things to your system. It always comes back, though.

Yes, it's a fad diet. And apart from the oat bran craze of 1988-1989, I've never seen one as pervasive and annoying. Now, in the US, every food producer and restaurant is promoting "low carb" or "Atkins friendly". I saw a low-carb burger - it simply has no bun. It's carb this, carb that, and I'm getting sick of it. You can't go a day without hearing the word "carb". And it's never "carbohydrate"; it's always "carb". I even saw a vodka ad that stated "No carbs". You know that when breakfast cereals start engaging in fad diets (like the oat bran craze), that saturation point has been reached.

The whole thing is about to implode upon itself, and soon some medical study will come out (and a few have already come out) saying that the Atkins diet is ineffective or dangerous.

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